With the progress in recent electronics technology, a reduction in size and increase in capacitance have been required for laminated ceramic capacitors. In order to satisfy these requirements, a reduction in dielectric layer thickness has advanced in the layers of laminated ceramic capacitors. However, the reduction of the dielectric layers in layer thickness causes an increase in the electric field intensity applied per layer. Therefore, improvements in reliability in the case of applying a voltage, and in particular, improvements in the lifetime characteristic in a high-temperature loading test is required for the dielectric ceramic used in the dielectric layers.
For example, Patent Document 1 discloses a dielectric ceramic which is characterized in that the dielectric ceramic has a perovskite-type crystal structure containing barium titanate as its main constituent and containing a rare-earth element, magnesium, and manganese as accessory constituents, and is represented by the composition formula (Ba1-yREy)(Ti1-a-bMaoMnb)O3 (RE: rare-earth element), with respective ranges expressed by 0.06≦y≦0.09, 0.03≦ao≦0.045, and 0.012≦b≦0.018.